


winter

by AmalyaSoramuni



Category: Original Work
Genre: Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, phobia of a person, unnecessarily metaphorical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 15:01:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4791707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmalyaSoramuni/pseuds/AmalyaSoramuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a work i did for my short story class.</p>
            </blockquote>





	winter

You've always hated the winter. The way everything stands still, freezes in place and allows the chill into its bones and its heart, the way it all stops in fear of its impending death.

Or perhaps you didn't always. Maybe there was something about the crunch of ice beneath your feet and steam from your mouth telling you that amidst the snow castles and empty burrows, you were alive. Maybe you loved being able to sit inside and look out at the white white landscape, blank like a canvas, and knew that you were warm, with a heart still beating and a head not dead.

Maybe. Probably. It's so easy for you to doubt the past lately.

It is not winter now. Summer is playing the last strains of an easy and free ballad, in preparation for autumn's slow and steady waltz onward. You're awake early for the first time in months. It's the day you'd been counting down to. Maybe others ticked off their calendars with excitement, joy even. But yours is scored with blue x's, lines not shaking yet, not until the last few days that you began to feel summer's warmth leave.

You're dressed well, have to make a good first impression on the teachers, have to keep up a brave and smiling face. Maybe this is the year you get over it. (Maybe this is the year He disappears. (Hah. Fate would never allow that.)) For now, you'll take the first step out the door into early morning's embrace, cloaking you in slight warmth. The bag on your back is its own burden, but it won't bother you today, offering slight respite from the upcoming season's onslaught.

(As you walk to school, a chill breeze whispers across the back of your neck. Cold needles not yet digging into skin, teasing you. (Teasing like He always did.) You try not to think too hard about it.)

Your brave face won't allow for hesitation. The doors of the school don't stop you, but as you march onward to the place where you know your friends are waiting (where He might be too) you reshuffle your mask, pull together the excitement of jubilant reunions around you into a smile of your own. A smile that can match the tired but honest ones your friends wear as you pace up to them. (They're unburdened, no knots in their hearts, arms unshielded from impending cold. (You've told them what happened when you let the chill in, but only a few consistently understand.))

And then, as you speak to them (so warm and you missed them your bright sunshine to melt away the cold at least a little) you catch a glimpse of wild icicle hair, frosted gaze, a long coat unreasonable for summer's heat, and your breath freezes. Your mask shields your face like you practiced, keeping your gaze to your friends and pretend you can't see in that direction, pretend summer can last.

(He passes, but you know He saw you. You know it was stupid to hope that maybe this would be the year He stopped coming around, but you let yourself do it anyway. And now the frost in your heart encroaches a little closer. Was the air always this thin?)

First period you end up alone, and you don't mind. Easier to forget He exists that way. You smile for the teacher, pretend you're as brave as you act. It's practice, practice for something you hope doesn't come.

And then, inevitably, it does.

Second period rolls the dread back into your heart. You take a seat in the corner and wait. No friends in this class either, is what it looks like. You hope. You hope. (It's so stupid to hope.)

The door opens and you feel winter stream in with its curling tendrils of fear that seek you out and grip your heart tight. Of course, everyone else welcomes Him, with His neverending entertainments and eccentricities (and you used to do more than welcome Him you loved Him you loved His winter cold and dear) and you just pull up your backpack-burden-turned-shield a little closer to you and pretend to be working on something, pretend you're not watching His every move in case He comes a single step closer, pretend to be just ignoring Him with a quiet mask made of a half-excited smile and pretend He doesn't know you well enough to know what that means. (Maybe you'll be able to deal with it. Maybe you can actually stay in a class you want to take this year.)

He takes up the seat in front of you.

(You were lying, lying, lying. Even when you thought you were okay with it (three summers ago) you could never deal with it, cried yourself to sleep over His troubles, tried to coax the cold back when it went, and you were stupid, so stupid.)

You don't move. That'll draw attention (and He'll know just how afraid you are, your carefully-kept secret of three years, dancing around Him and bundling up thicker in the hopes He'll never reach you again) and class is finally starting. It's the same teacher, and you've heard the spiel before. Sure, he loves his students, but why why why does he let Him keep talking.

The class (made of those you know and don't know, too shallow of an acquaintance because you always, always transfer out) keeps up their easy and casual banter with each other and Him as the teacher calls roll.

His name comes before yours. You shiver when He speaks His presence, because He's always always there (why can't He be gone why can't He just stop troubling you (when did you become so afraid)) to twist your heart into tighter knots and you barely barely work up the strength to speak loud enough as the teacher comes to your name and you whisper to the chill air "here."

The teacher starts class but there's something already winding through your insides, the crackle of ice through your cracked and splintered heart ready to shove the gap wider and cut off your circulation, and you feel everything you are outside grinding to a halt and your insides shiver to compensate, blazing the old trails into the cold cold hills of your memory, and white static clogs your ears and the memory pulls you under the snowdrifts-

And you remember being happy to see snow happy to see the ice that crackled and the drift of snowflakes through chill air happy to see Him who you loved so dear so happy to have a moment alone until until until cold cold hands shoved you to the wall and pulled the breath from your throat (you thought the response to danger in animals was fight or flight fight or flight but oh no this was the winter so cold and instead of fighting back or fleeing no you froze and you let the chill have its way with your heart) and replaced all that was warm in you with how weak you were how weak you still are frozen and brittle and how much the winter you loved hated everything you are and He told you that He filled you with that and you didn't understand couldn't breathe couldn't move under eyes so blue and once He left dropped you and dropped your throat and the thaw came you didn't run, walked away so calm and cold with your frozen-on smile like nothing happened, went back to those still standing in sunshine with eyes not wet or dripping only frosted and you didn't truly melt until you got home that day or maybe never truly melted at all-

You don't know how long you've been shaking, only that the mask holds. The teacher's voice is static and the one thing that cuts through is His voice His voice like a knife and you-

You can't do it, can't be near Him heart beating too fast His voice is a knife stripping off your skin His laugh punching holes in your lungs why why is He here (when did you get so afraid) He is something supernatural and you are the lowly mortal He will crush you crush your soul already takes your breathing by existing, but you can't move and the cold has frozen you to your seat and He keeps laughing and spitting out cruel icicle jokes and everyone else laughs and the mask smiles and you scream and scream and scream silent to the empty air to the chill inside your heart (how are they not afraid how can they not be afraid of Him you don't understand (why would He say that, you loved Him) you don't understand anything (your head clangs church bells of "how could you have been so _stupid_ ") you don't understand) and you scream and scream and scream and it's all your fault all your fault you were the one who was stupid enough to let the chill into your heart.

Eternity passes and you are frozen to your silent penance amidst winter and cold sunshine. You count down the minutes, count down the seconds and every time He speaks is another layer of ice another shiver in your heart and outside you are blank and winter's cold canvas but inside you are anything but.

(Once, only once, He turns to look at you in the middle of a joke and you look up because you have to, have to not seem scared of the winter He holds in His cruel blue eyes.)

The bell rings (finally finally finally part of your heart starts to melt in relief) and you already know third period will bring sunshine and you stand gracefully from your throne of ice because of course you've been fine the whole time just fine and wait until the rest of your warm warm classmates leave (and the winter leaves with them in a swirl of an unseasonable coat and a shower of snowflakes) to tell the teacher that you are going to transfer out of his class again. Thankfully, he remembers your arrangements from last year, already knows to move you to a warmer classroom.

Third period and the ice melts in a sunshine embrace of someone you haven't seen for months but still shines just as bright to you (and you remember what it feels when love is a good thing).

You only see Him once more that day, pass Him by in the hallway. It must have been only a second to Him, but the moment your eyes lock you turn away and smile a brave smile and walk back towards sunshine and keep your head up in the hallway make a convenient excuse to get away get away get away from Him, He who holds winter in His cold blue eyes.

(Fate is kind to you this year. You only shared that single class, and only for the first day. (The rest of the day, you let yourself remember what it feels like to be warm.))

You've evaded winter again, sure, but He will always be there to wind through the halls and cast rime over your insides again, and you will always be powerless to stop Him because He is a constant force that will surely take its course and you'll always always have to wait it out, wait out the long winter.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not sure why i'm posting this here. maybe because i want to make it easier to tell people, because this is nonfiction.  
> i don't have much else to say here. this is a break from my usual kind of stuff, so it's odd to be posting it. i hope you enjoyed it anyway.


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